Somewhere in, or before 1991 a group of students
(the authors) were in need of a project to
program. They decided to make a Boulderdash clone. After a lot of hard work,
their game (then called "Think") was completed, and they sold it to
Digital Integration.

The name "Think" was apparently already in use in another game
somewhere, so to avoid legal problems they changed the name to
"Supaplex", the name everyone here now knows well.

The release of Supaplex was accompanied by a special contest (and a demo with
only a few levels was sent to a lot of magazines - I have copies of several of
the articles these magazines printed. Some in languages I can't even read :-)

After a while, the level editor seemed "finished". (It didn't even
support gravity, since my limited playing of Supaplex never got me in a
situtation where gravity was present!) I made some new levels, and that was
about it for then. I put the editor in the cupboard, and got on to new
adventures.

When I got on the Internet a few years later (around 1994), I decided to put
the level editor up there. I didn't know anyone who knew Supaplex, but it
didn't cost me anything to put up the editor for download, so why not?

I also found out about the famous Hilde's
Supaplex page - really the first webpage ever about Supaplex! It was my
first encounter with a human being outside my own house that knew Supaplex.
While I worked some more on my level editor, I got to know more people
enjoying Supaplex, and I decided it would be a good idea to share my
home-made levels with other people, and maybe they would also share their
levels. For this purpose, I created a page where all new
Supaplex levels that were sent to me would be
available for download.

By the time my Supaplex pages were online for the first time, people started
asking me questions about the LEGAL status of Supaplex. I was under the
impression that the company was broke. Since the game was property of Digital
Integration, there was a problem for people who wanted to get the game
LEGALLY, since it could no longer be purchased anywhere (except a few second
hand copies maybe), and copying would be illegal.

To find a good answer to the important question, I went to look for
the authors of Supaplex, and asked them about
it. They said that it would be ok if I just gave away the game for free, and
that they enjoyed seeing the game still "alive". So that's what I
did. I put up the game on my webpage, free for downloading.

After some time, I found out that there was another level editor (at present
I know of lots of level editors.) To my astonishment, the level editor was
also made by a Dutch guy, who even lived in the same village as I do (with
less than 30000 people!) This was an unbelievable coincidence, considering my
belief that there were only a few dozen Supaplex fans in the world.

In the mean time, I found out that Digital Integration was, in fact,
still alive and kicking, so I immediately asked them about the distribution
of Supaplex. Luckily (for all Supaplex fans) they agreed to let me continue
to give away the game for free.

Then something really important happened. I got to know Herman Perk, who told
me that Supaplex was actually running too fast! It seemed that on a slow
computer, Supaplex would run fine, but on a fast computer (anything faster
than a 286 probably) it would run at twice the speed. After some debugging,
and reading through hardly readable assembler code, he found the problem, and
created the first SpeedFix. As with any
program, there were improvements, and soon version 4 was to be released, the
first SpeedFix to be "officially

distributed as "SUPAPLEX.EXE
substitute".

Since those old days, my pages have been growing steadily over the years. New
levels have been sent to me regularly, and there are now already over six
hundred new levels (compared to the 111 original ones)! I have added
related software, background information, explanations, frequently asked
questions, and more. There are more Supaplex fans than I would have ever
imagined when I first started on the level editor.

Of course, there is now Igor to worry about.
It started out as Supaplex 2, but for legal reasons (Digital Integrations
goodness doesn't go on forever, however unfortunate) the name was changed to
Igor, and almost everything else has changed too. I am confident that the game
will be finished eventually, even though it might take a long time, and even
though it's sometimes like the end will never come into sight.

To look even further into the future, maybe there will be three dimensional
versions of Supaplex-clones (in fact, there has already been speculation
about 3D-plex, but it seems hard to find a good way to show the playfield
clearly on screen.) New Supaplex-clones may be getting even more extensive
than Igor, and they will continue to look, hear and feel better. Maybe there
will be a virtual reality version one day? Then you can walk through the
playfield yourself. You will be Murphy more than ever before.

Well, that's as far as I dare to look. Any further will be dreaming. That's
not a bad thing, it's just that I always have trouble remembering my dreams
when I wake up, so I can't tell you about it here.